Bisher al-Rawi. [Source: Public domain]In late September 2001, Bisher al-Rawi, a long-time friend of London imam Abu Qatada, agrees to become an informant for the British intelligence agency MI5 (see Late September 2001). Al-Rawi mainly works as an intermediary between MI5 and the high-profile imam. He will later explain that he agreed to work as an informant as an attempt to help ease tensions between the government and the Muslim community. Abu Qatada had begun working as an informant for MI5 in 1996 (see June 1996-February 1997), and contrary to some reports, his relationship with that agency had not yet ended. In December 2001, Abu Qatada reportedly disappears just before a new law passes that would allow his indefinite detention (see Early December 2001). British officials claim to have no idea where Abu Qatada is, and at first apparently they really do not. But al-Rawi soon finds out where he is, tells MI5, and begins passing messages back and forth between MI5 and Abu Qatada. [Observer, 7/29/2007] The Independent will later report, “Abu Qatada was completely aware of Mr al-Rawi’s relationship with MI5. Mr al-Rawi carried questions and answers between the parties, served as a translator, and participated in negotiations with Abu Qatada.” Al-Rawi himself will later say, “All I did in Britain was try to help with steps necessary to get a meeting between Abu Qatada and MI5. I was trying to bring them together. MI5 would give me messages to take to Abu Qatada, and Abu Qatada would give me messages to take back to them.” [Independent, 3/16/2006] According to his family members and his lawyer, soon the MI5 agents are coming to his house and calling him so frequently that his relatives complain. As a result, MI5 gives him a cell phone and agrees to meet with him elsewhere. The British government will later acknowledge that al-Rawi served as an unpaid informant in a court document. [Washington Post, 4/2/2006] In the summer of 2002, al-Rawi begins to have doubts about his role and is fired (see Summer 2002). Abu Qatada is arrested in late October 2002, just after coming out of hiding in an attempt to morally justify the 9/11 attacks (see October 23, 2002). In early November, al-Rawi will fly to Gambia and be detained there (see November 8, 2002-December 7, 2002). [Washington Post, 4/2/2006]

Jamil al-Banna. [Source: Public domain]Jamil al-Banna is friends with Bisher al-Rawi, who is working as an informant for the British intelligence agency MI5. Al-Rawi is mostly helping MI5 communicate with imam Abu Qatada, who also is an MI5 informant but is pretending to be in hiding (see Late September 2001-Summer 2002 and Early December 2001). Al-Banna is aware of al-Rawi’s work and begins to help him. Sometimes al-Banna also serves as a go-between for MI5 and Abu Qatada. Al-Rawi stops working for MI5 in the summer of 2002 (see Summer 2002), but al-Banna does not. For instance, when Abu Qatada is arrested in late October 2002 (see October 23, 2002), al-Banna takes his wife and child home at the request of the British officials on the scene. [Independent, 3/16/2006] But in early November 2002, al-Banna will go to Gambia with al-Rawi on business, and MI5 will turn the two of them over to the CIA to be interrogated (see November 8, 2002-December 7, 2002).

Wahab al-Rawi. [Source: Public domain]Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna, both long-time British residents, and Abdullah El-Janoudi, a British citizen, fly from London to Gambia. They are planning to help al-Rawi’s brother, Wahab al-Rawi, set up a mobile peanut oil processing company. But before they left, they were detained for several days by police. Meanwhile, the British intelligence agency MI5 sent the CIA false information about them, for instance alleging that al-Rawi was traveling with a timing device for a bomb, even though MI5 had already inspected it and determined it was simply a battery charger (see November 1-7, 2002). MI5 asks the CIA to detain and question them when they arrive in Gambia. Wahab al-Rawi is already in Gambia, and when he and a friend arrive to greet the three men, all five of them are detained by Gambian agents. [Washington Post, 4/2/2006; Observer, 7/29/2007] But the men are moved to hidden locations and safe houses around the capital. Technically, they are held by the NIA, the Gambian intelligence agency, but CIA agents act as if they are in charge. They are intensively interrogated for many days, and one American using the alias Lee leads the questioning. Al-Rawi and al-Banna had recently worked as informants for MI5, helping them communicate with the radical imam Abu Qatada, who was said to be in hiding but was really an MI5 informant himself (see Late September 2001-Summer 2002 and Summer-Early November 2002). However, MI5 has given the CIA the impression that they were not informants but were plotting with Qatada. Al-Rawi will later say, “From the beginning, the questions made it plain that the Americans had been given the contents of my own MI5 file, which was supposed to be confidential. Lee even told me the British were giving him information. I had agreed to help MI5 because I wanted to prevent terrorism, and now the information I had freely given them was being used against me in an attempt to prove that I myself was some kind of terrorist.” [Observer, 7/29/2007] When Wahab refuses to cooperate and asks either for a lawyer or a representative from the British high commission, the Gambian agents laugh and tell him it was the British who ordered the arrests. [Guardian, 7/11/2003] According to Amnesty International, one of them is warned that if he does not cooperate he will be turned over to the Gambian police who will “beat and rape him.” [Amnesty International, 8/19/2003] The Washington Post will later report, “The primary purpose of this elaborate operation, documents and interviews suggest, was not to neutralize a pair of potential terrorists—authorities have offered no evidence that they were planning attacks—but to turn them into informers.” Al-Rawi’s lawyer will later speculate, “Either it was an attempt to put these guys at risk and to use them to find evidence that would implicate Abu Qatada, or it was an attempt to bring them within the closer control of MI5.” Just a day before leaving Britain, MI5 agents asked al-Banna to become a full-time informant and he had turned them down (see October 31, 2002). After about a month, all but Bisher al-Rawi and al-Banna are freed and allowed to return to Britain. The two of them, however, are flown to the US prison in Bagram, Afghanistan, where harsher interrogation methods can be used on them. [Washington Post, 4/2/2006] Before they leave Gambia, one of their US interrogators tells al-Rawi that they now realize the two of them were MI5 informants, but they will be sent to Bagram anyway. “He told me: ‘We know you were working for MI5’, and said if I told the truth I would get out.” [Observer, 7/29/2007]

Jamil al-Banna. [Source: Public domain]On December 8, 2002, British residents Bisher Al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna are secretly flown from Gambia to the US military base in Bagram, Afghanistan. They had been held in Gambia by the CIA after the British intelligence agency MI5 gave the CIA false information suggesting the two of them were Islamist militants. In fact, they had worked until recently as informants for MI5. In Gambia, they were pressured to resume their informant work (see November 8, 2002-December 7, 2002). Once in Bagram, they are again pressured to be informants. The CIA asks if they will inform for them, instead of MI5. Al-Banna in particular is offered increasing sums of money and a US passport if he works for the CIA, but he refuses. [Washington Post, 4/2/2006] They are initially taken to the “dark prison” near Kabul and kept in the cold in complete darkness for two weeks. Loudspeakers blare music at them 24 hours a day. Al-Rawi will later recall: “For three days or so I just sat in the corner, shivering. The only time there was light was when a guard came to check on me with a very dim torch—as soon as he’d detect movement, he would leave. I tried to do a few push-ups and jogged on the spot to keep warm. There was no toilet paper, but I tore off my nappies and tried to use them to clean myself.” After about two weeks, they are taken to the nearby Bagram prison. They are heavily abused there too, starting by beating beaten up as they arrive. The two of them had worked as go-betweens between MI5 and the radical imam Abu Qatada, and in Bagram they are heavily pressured to incriminate Abu Qatada. By this time, Abu Qatada is imprisoned in Britain and fighting deportation. [Observer, 7/29/2007] Al-Banna will later tell a detainee in Guantanamo, Asif Iqbal, that Bagram was “rough” and “that he had been forced to walk around naked, coming and going from the showers, having to parade past American soldiers or guards including women who would laugh at everyone who was put in the same position.” [Rasul, Iqbal, and Ahmed, 7/26/2004 ] At no time during their detention are they permitted to see a lawyer, despite the fact that a habeas corpus petition has been filed on their behalf and is pending before British courts. In March 2003, they are sent to Guantanamo (see March 2003-November 18, 2007). [Amnesty International, 8/19/2003; Petition for writ of habeas corpus for Bisher al-Rawi, Jamil el-Banna and Martin Mubanga. Jamil el-Banna, et al. v. George Bush, et al., 7/8/2004 ]

Bisher al-Rawi. [Source: Craig Hibbert]In February 2003, British residents Bisher al-Rawi and Jamil al-Banna are transferred from Bagram in Afghanistan to the Guantanamo prison. They spend their first month in isolation. Al-Rawi’s head and beard are shaved off as has allegedly already happened to al-Banna during his detention at Bagram. Al-Banna is put in a cell next to detainee Asif Iqbal. “[S]oon after,” Iqbal will later recall, al-Banna “began to deteriorate.” At Guantanamo, according to Iqbal, “al-Banna was in constant pain from his joints because he suffered from rheumatism and he was diabetic.” [Rasul, Iqbal, and Ahmed, 7/26/2004 ] Al-Rawi and al-Banna had served as informants for the British intelligence agency MI5, helping MI5 communicate with radical imam Abu Qatada, who also was an MI5 informant (see Late September 2001-Summer 2002 and Summer-Early November 2002). First in Gambia and then in Bagram, they were pressured to resume being informants, but they refused (see November 8, 2002-December 7, 2002 and December 8, 2002-March 2003). After about six months in Guantanamo, an MI5 officer visits al-Rawi and again asks him if he wants to resume being an informer. Later, one of his previous MI5 handlers comes to visit him. He will recall: “I suppose he was nice enough. He asked if I wanted anything. I asked for a book on base jumping. He never came back, and I never got the book.” Eventually, two other previous handlers visit him and try to recruit him yet again. “They said, “You know, Bisher, if you agree to work for us when you get back to Britain, we’ll get you out.” They promised to return, but never did.” When al-Rawi faces a tribunal in September 2004 to determine if his detention is justified, he asks for his previous MI5 handlers to corroborate that he had been an informant. The British government refuses to help in any way, and the tribunal decides that he should continue to be imprisoned. The two of them grow increasingly bored and depressed, and face harsh conditions. For instance, after three detainees commit suicide in June 2006, the jailers retaliate by keeping the air conditioning turned to maximum for months. “We were freezing the whole time. Other times they made it scorching hot,” al-Rawi says. Al-Banna is not even allowed to phone his sick mother just before she dies. [Washington Post, 4/2/2006; Observer, 7/29/2007] Al-Rawi will finally be freed and flown back to Britain on April 3, 2007. Al-Banna will be freed and returned to Britain on November 18, 2007.

Bisher al-Rawi holding a child after release. [Source: Craig Hibbert]British resident Bisher al-Rawi is released from the Guantanamo prison after being held there for almost five years (see March 2003-November 18, 2007). He and a man named Jamil al-Banna had been arrested by the CIA in 2002 after being given information by the British intelligence agency MI5 that MI5 knew to be false (see November 8, 2002-December 7, 2002). He had worked as an informant for MI5 and they apparently wanted to pressure him to resume informing for them, but he refused. He and al-Banna were interrogated and abused in Gambia, Bagram in Afghanistan, and Guantanamo. He says, “My nightmare is finally at an end.” Al-Rawi’s lawyer says of al-Rawi’s US jailers: “Right to the end they treated him with brutality. On the way to the plane in Guantanamo—they knew he was leaving—they insisted still on shackling him, blindfolding him, putting on earmuffs so he couldn’t hear a thing and keeping him in the back of a very hot, very confined van on the way to the plane.” [BBC, 4/1/2007] Britain showed no interest in helping al-Rawi until he publicly revealed in 2006 that he had been an MI5 informant (see April 20, 2006). Then it took over a year of secret negotiations before the US and Britain came to terms for releasing him (see October 3, 2006).

Jamil al-Banna speaking to the press after returning to Britain. [Source: Getty Images]On November 18, 2007, two British residents, Jamil al-Banna and Omar Deghayes, are released from the Guantanamo prison and returned to Britain. However, both men are immediately arrested when they arrive in Britain, because Spain has had an outstanding extradition request for them and two others since December 2003. The two others were later cleared of all wrongdoing. Al-Banna and Deghayes are released on bail a month later. [BBC, 12/20/2007] Then, on March 6, 2008, Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon drops the extradition request after ruling that they are unfit to stand trial. British doctors who recently examined them say they are in poor health due to torture and inhumane treatment at Guantanamo (see March 2003-November 18, 2007). For instance, al-Banna is said to be severely depressed, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and has diabetes, hypertension, and back pain. [Guardian, 3/6/2008] However, an article in The Guardian will say that while the two men are in poor health, that is really just a face-saving excuse to drop the extradition. Al-Banna in particular appears to have been framed by the British intelligence agency MI5, which gave the CIA false information about him and his friend Bisher al-Rawi that led to their capture and long imprisonment (see November 8, 2002-December 7, 2002 and December 8, 2002-March 2003). Al-Rawi was freed from Guantanamo earlier in the year (see April 1, 2007). The Guardian will say of al-Banna and Deghayes: “The innocence of the men will probably not be acknowledged publicly. It should be, if they are to rebuild their lives after the years of horror.… British complicity in the rendition of al-Banna from the Gambia to Afghanistan, and then to Guantanamo Bay, is in the public domain and shames us all.” [Guardian, 3/6/2008]

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